Word: prioress
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1952-1952
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Prioress' Revenge. Yet it was Sister Jeanne, prioress of the Ursulines, who brought the long delusion of Grandier to an end. In Huxley's interpretation, her native hysteria was aggravated by the abnegations of convent life; she began to have daydreams, and later night sweats, about the handsome priest. She offered him the post of director of her convent, and Grandier refused. Thereupon, as Huxley reads the evidence, Sister Jeanne's fantasies turned into a mania for sadistic revenge...
Appointing a confessor who was a sworn enemy of Grandier, Sister Jeanne began to confide to him her symptoms of a demonic infestation that clearly indicated Grandier as the infester. Soon 16 other nuns, under the vivid suggestion of their prioress' example, found themselves with demon: here Leviathan in the center of a forehead; there, Enemy of the Virgin in the neck; Asmodeus (in Hebraic lore, king of the demons) snuggled in a groin; Concupiscence at home in the left...
...clear-edged characters appear: Christabel Cowper, the hard-minded, powermongering Prioress of Marrick; Lord Darcy, a subtle old nobleman who holds kings cheap and honor dear; July Savage, the unhappy sister of a famous whore; Robert Aske, squire and barrister, a young man who lives in a straight line, and so cannot avoid trouble when it comes...